TJ and the Quiz Kids

by Hazel Hutchins

  We rounded the corner just in time to see T-Rex push his head through a spot where the baseboard had come loose and there was a crack between a beam and the floor. His body seemed to grow long and snaky as he pulled himself through.

  “Proving once and for all that the shoulder blades on cats aren’t attached the same way they are on humans,” said Seymour.

  “I don’t think Dad would be keen on tearing up the floor to rescue T-Rex if he ever got stuck down there,” I said.

  Seymour and I blocked off the gap. After that we opened the tin of salmon and treated the cats while we tried to remember the shopping list from earlier. I did pretty well except I included the giant rabbit, which wasn’t actually on the list. We made sandwiches for ourselves and decided to eat them in front of the TV. It was set to the cable channel that shows what’s on TV, lists community events and shows the current time, second by second.

  “I guess we missed the cannonball,” I said.

  “Nope, just about right,” said Seymour. He jumped on the sofa. “Five, four, three, two, one—bingo!”

  “It’s been over an hour!” I said.

  “That’s how long it would take a cannonball to reach the deepest part of the ocean—an hour,” said Seymour. “It’s a very, very long way down.”

  My attention, however, had been pulled away by the TV. The blurb for Quiz Kids was rolling across the screen. There were our names, starting with Amanda Baker and ending with TJ Barnes.

  That was the good part—seeing my name on TV. Next came the bad part.

  “Oh no!” I said. “It’s her!”

  “Who?” said Seymour, sitting bolt upright on the living room floor, his head swiveling around like crazy. “Where?”

  “The girl with the dog that tried to eat T-Rex. That’s her name!”

  I pointed at the TV. Second on the list for Fairview was Elizabeth Ann Jessop.

  CHAPTER 6

  The thing that really drives me crazy about life is how things snowball.

  “I found out something strange,” said Gran when she came to our place for supper the next night. “Gladys and I know someone else who’s traveling to Belize—not when we leave here on the local flight but when we change to a larger plane at the international airport. My neighbor has a niece whose best friend’s father is on the same flight to Belize as we are.”

  “It amazes me how often those kinds of coincidences happen,” said Mom.

  “Maybe not quite a coincidence,” said Dad. “There’s a theory called Six Degrees of Separation. The idea is that everybody on the planet has some sort of connection to everybody else through just six stages. If you do the math, it almost makes sense. Let’s say I know one hundred people, and they each know one hundred people, and they each know one hundred people, all the way along through six levels. How many people is that, TJ?”

  “Something with twelve zeros,” I said. “A trillion?”

  “I think so,” said Dad. “Mind you, there are over six trillion people on the planet. And some people live in isolated communities where there wouldn’t be as many connections with the outside world, so it might not work in all cases.”

  “But in North America it would make sense,” said Gran. “Maybe it’s not so strange that I’d know someone on the same plane…well, sort of know them.”

  And maybe it wasn’t so strange that there would be a connection between our Quiz Kids team and the Fairview team. But why did it have to be Elizabeth with the glop glop dog? And why did I have to be the missing link?

  Seymour had also been thinking about the connection.

  “You know the girl with the dog, Elizabeth what’s-her-name on the Fairview team?” he asked on the way to school the next morning. “You need to make friends with her. It’s like I said—you can check out the competition.”

  “No, I can’t,” I told him.

  “Sure you can,” said Seymour. “Ask her about Quiz Kids without making it obvious. All those big houses have satellite Tv, not cable. Even if she happens to know your name, she won’t know that you’re on the team. Find out how they study. Figure out their strategy.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere near her.”

  “Why not?” asked Seymour.

  “Because I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m an idiot,” I said.

  “Even better,” said Seymour. “She won’t suspect you!”

  “She’s not going to suspect me because I’m not going to ask,” I said. “And Dad’s done at the Jessop house.”

  But when I dropped by the store after picking up a slushie, I discovered that things had changed. Dad had just come down from Fairview. Boy, was he steamed.

  “Remember those two fellows we hired because they claimed to be the world’s greatest flooring experts? They put in the wrong subfloor at the Jessop house. I caught them tiling over it to hide their ‘mistake,’ and you should have seen the mess they were making of that!”

  Mom frowned. Dad kept ranting.

  “‘Just let it slide!’ they told me. ‘We’ll cut you in. We’ll all make a little extra money…your clients have lots of it. They won’t even know.’”

  “Oh dear,” said Mom.

  “Boy, I hate it when someone tries to cheat on a contract,” said Dad. “I treat people fairly and I expect others to do the same. I sent them packing.”

  “You did the right thing,” said Mom. “But now I don’t know what we’ll do. The Jessops are away. I promised them that all the tiling would be done by the time they get back on Friday night.”

  “It won’t be done by Friday,” said Dad. “I can rip out the crappy stuff tonight and lay the proper subfloor myself between other jobs on Thursday. But I don’t have enough experience with tile. I asked Tony, but he can’t do it until Saturday. Plus you know what he charges on weekends. There goes whatever profit we hoped to make on the project.”

  Mom, however, was nodding in agreement.

  “Tony will do a great job, and that would really help,” she said. “The Jessop renovation is important. It could pull in all kinds of new clients for us up in Fairview. She’s a professor at the university. He’s a lawyer. They do a lot of entertaining—we couldn’t get better advertising.”

  A university professor and a lawyer—I almost choked on my slushie. Elizabeth probably had an IQ of a zillion! And unless I thought of some way to duck out of it, I’d probably see her again this weekend.

  One look at Dad, however, and I knew I wasn’t going to try to duck out of anything. His hair was caked with drywall dust, and his glasses were taped together in two spots instead of one. He’d been working extra hard lately because Mr. G. was sick. He’d need my help on Saturday. I figured he could use a hand tonight too.

  “If you’re going back there tonight, I’ll help you,” I said.

  “Not on a weeknight, TJ,” said Dad, shaking his head.

  “It’s a weeknight for you too,” I said. “It’s not fair that you have to work all day and all night and lose money on top of everything.”

  “We’ll both help,” said Mom. “It won’t take as long with all three of us.”

  Even then, it was late when we finished up at the Jessops’ house. Dad was a whole lot happier about the situation, but maybe I was more tired than I realized. By the time Quiz Kids practice rolled around the next afternoon, I wasn’t in a very good mood.

  Seymour, on the other hand, was pumped. He arrived with a whole new set of amazing facts.

  Ding.

  “Hippos’ sweat is red and acts as a sunblock.”

  Ding.

  “The largest living thing is a fungus.”

  Maria was looking more and more like a storm cloud. Even Amanda and Rashid were having trouble concentrating. It wasn’t just that Seymour was throwing in facts everywhere. It was that his dings were breaking the rhythm of question and answer. The others had been working hard studying their own material; it wasn’t fair that Seymour kept ringing in wildly.

  Ding.

  “The fear of
being naked is gymnotophobia.”

  Ding.

  “The noises your stomach makes are called borborygmi.”

  Meanwhile, I was hoping to answer at least one question. Ask about oceans, I thought. Ask about oceans, ask about oceans.

  “We now move to geography,” said Mr. Phelps. “Name the third-largest ocean.”

  My brain blocked all distractions and zeroed in: Pete Attwater Ignores… Seymour must have been doing the same thing because—Ding —we both hit our bells at the same time.

  “Indian,” we said together.

  Maria threw her hands in the air. She wasn’t cheering.

  “Didn’t you hear? Amanda just answered that!” said Maria.

  I turned to Amanda. She looked apologetic, but she nodded just the same. I guess I’d gone too far in the concentration department. I hadn’t heard the bell or her answer. Brother. Meanwhile, Maria was ranting at Seymour.

  “Don’t you even listen? You have to keep up. You have to focus,” said Maria.

  “How can I focus when you’re so busy being a bell hog?” countered Seymour.

  “I’m not a bell hog!” said Maria.

  “You ring in all the time!” said Seymour.

  “I only ring in when I have the right answer to the right question at the right time!” said Maria. “And you are a complete and utter…”

  Mr. Phelps interrupted in his calmest vice-principal manner. “Maria, I understand your frustration, but please don’t overreact. This is a practice session, and Quiz Kids is not a matter of life and death. And Seymour, maybe you could…”

  “TJ rang in too,” said Seymour. “Why is it always me she complains about?”

  “Because you’re the one that constantly rings in to answer your own questions!” said Maria.

  “Which is better than TJ, who never knows answers or questions or anything!” said Seymour.

  That did it. Now he’d even made me mad.

  “I know lots of things!” I said. “I just don’t go blabbing them all over and driving everyone crazy!”

  My voice had come out really, really loud. Everyone looked shocked, especially Seymour. He looked from Maria to Mr. Phelps to Amanda to Rashid. No one said a word. Finally he looked back at me. I didn’t trust myself to say anything.

  Seymour folded his arms, pressed his lips tightly together and stared off pointedly at nothing at all. The message was pretty clear. Not a single word was going to escape from his mouth, even if the roof was about to fall on us. It was Amanda who finally broke the silence.

  “I think we’re ready for more questions,” she said.

  Mr. Phelps went back to asking questions. Rashid, Maria and Amanda went back to coming up with answers. Seymour kept staring into space. Bit by bit, I forgot about him. I began concentrating on the questions. I’d been studying while Seymour had been dropping cannonballs. I answered a question about planets at the same time as Rashid—I forgot to ring in, so it wouldn’t have counted in a game, but at least I answered it.

  I answered the individual questions Mr. Phelps gave each of us. And then there was a math question. Dad does lots of math in his head when he figures things on the job, and he always includes me. It’s like a game we play together. And this question was related to something we’d been talking about at Gran’s just a few days ago.

  “How many black squares are there on a chessboard?” asked Mr. Phelps.

  Ding.

  “Thirty-two,” I answered.

  “Correct,” said Mr. Phelps.

  When it was all over, Seymour headed out the door without me.

  CHAPTER 7

  As soon as I came through our gate that afternoon, I looked toward the front windows of our house. Alaska’s green eyes were already peering through the glass. No matter what time of day I come home, her special cat-senses alert her and she comes to the window to watch for me. Today it felt especially good to see her friendly face.

  I expected T -Rex to come running as soon as I opened the door. Instead I heard him howling.

  Meow. Meow. Meow.

  “T-Rex?” I called.

  Meow, meow, meow.

  Wherever he was, he wasn’t happy. Oh, brother. Here we go again, I thought.

  I checked the vents, the spot behind the sofa and the dining room chairs. No T-Rex. I made sure the baseboard gap was still blocked off, and I lay on the floor and listened, just in case. Nope. The howling wasn’t coming from the floor joists. I checked the laundry hamper. I checked the garbage. I even checked the downstairs toilet. No T-Rex.

  I thought about opening a tin of salmon, but it was feeding time anyway. That’s probably why he was howling so loudly.

  Meow, meow, meow.

  The trouble was he didn’t keep howling. As soon as he heard me moving, he stopped. I guess he figured if I was on my way to the rescue, he didn’t need to call for help anymore. I was coming to his rescue, but without the howling I couldn’t find him!

  I headed up to search the bedrooms. At the top of the stairs I heard him again, but the sound didn’t seem to be coming from the bedrooms. It seemed to be coming from outside the bedrooms, through the screen of Mom and Dad’s window at the side of the house.

  Meow, meow, meow.

  Oh no! He must have escaped when Dad came home for lunch!

  I raced downstairs, out the front door and around the side of the house.

  “T-Rex? T-Rex!” I called.

  He wasn’t anywhere in sight. I walked all around the house. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him again.

  Meow, meow, meow.

  Now it definitely sounded like he was inside, at the back of the house where the kitchen is. In fact I was sure of it. I knew the kitchen door would still be locked, so I raced around through the front again.

  Meow, meow, meow.

  I hurried through the house, but as soon as I hit the kitchen, of course the howling stopped. No cat to be seen.

  I looked in the cupboards. I had a horrible thought and looked in the fridge and then the freezer and then—most horrible thought of all, except it wasn’t turned on so I knew he was okay—I looked in the oven. No T-Rex.

  I stood very, very, very still. I waited. And waited. And waited.

  MEOW MEOW MEOW.

  Good grief. The kitchen door was howling. Between the wooden kitchen door and the outside metal door there is a tiny, tiny space, barely the width of a few fingers. Sometimes, if the wooden door is open a bit, T-Rex goes into the space to snoop around. He couldn’t possibly…

  I opened the inside door. Out shot TRex. It was true. He’d been stuck in the tiny, tiny space between the doors. Dad must have shut the door without realizing he was there.

  “T-Rex! Are you all right?”

  Prrrrrrrrrrrr.

  I had to tell someone. I phoned Gran. Gran is perfect for cat stories. I also remembered that I had a message to pass along from Mom.

  “Guess what,” I said when Gran picked up the phone. “T-Rex is the world’s skinniest cat.”

  She laughed as I told her the entire story.

  “How’s the gang over there?” I asked.

  “It’s still ten days until my trip, and they already know I’m leaving,” said Gran. “Last night Killer climbed inside my backpack. I think she wants to come with me to Belize.”

  “I want to come too, Gran,” I said.

  I didn’t know how much I meant it until something in my own voice gave me away. There was a little moment of silence on the end of the phone, and then Gran asked, “What’s wrong, TJ?” And when I didn’t answer, she spoke again. “Does this have something to do with Quiz Kids? It’s the same day that I leave, isn’t it? How did practice go today?”

  “I didn’t mean to get mad at Seymour, Gran. And I didn’t try to show him up on purpose,” I said. “It’s just that I knew some of the answers, and they just came flying out.”

  “My goodness,” said Gran. “Are you admitting to a competitive streak, TJ? That’s actually not surprising news. Remember the
science fair and the rockets? Remember football?”

  “But I didn’t mean to compete against Seymour,” I said. “He’s my friend. And he’s really mad.”

  Even over the phone, I could hear Gran sigh.

  “It’s hard when friends are involved,” she said. “But you and Seymour have known each other for a long time, TJ. You’ll work it out.”

  Just as she said it, the doorbell sounded—two quick rings, the way Seymour always announces himself.

  “That sounds like him now,” said Gran. “I’ll let you go.”

  “Wait!” I said.

  “You need to talk to him, TJ,” said Gran. “It’s better to straighten things out right away.”

  “It’s something else,” I explained quickly. “Mom found the big suitcase. She has some school supplies left over from the hardware store, and she’s looking for some clothing to send to Belize too.”

  “Excellent,” said Gran. “Thanks, TJ. Bye.”

  Usually Seymour just double-rings and walks right in. When the rings came a second time, I realized I’d actually have to answer the door. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I opened it anyway.

  Seymour was standing on the front step. He was frowning hard, one eyebrow up and one eyebrow down. That’s what Seymour does when he’s trying to work something out in his head.

  “Your plan isn’t working,” he said.

  “What plan?” I asked.

  “Your plan to get me on the team,” said Seymour. “You’re the one Mr. Phelps really wanted right from the start. He didn’t call us to the office at the same time—he called you first. You’re the one he wants. And then you decided I had to be on the team too.”

  “Because you’re the one with all the weird facts in your head,” I said.

  “That’s the problem,” said Seymour. “I know too much!”

  “Seymour…,” I began.

  “Look,” he interrupted, “forget about what happened today. The truth is, I thought being on the Quiz Kids team was going to be a whole lot of fun, but it’s not. Maria drives me nuts. Practices are boring—they’re worse than sitting around in class. You be on the team. I’ll be your personal trainer. It’s the perfect solution.”